The 16th Biennial Conference for the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 19–21 October 2012 Cultures of Transition: Presence, Absence, Memory Preliminary Programme FRIDAY 19 13.00-13.15 Welcome and Introduction 13.15–14.45 Keynote lecture: Kevin Hart, Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, Chair, Dept of Religious Studies, University of Virginia, USA, Fields of Dharma: On T. S. Eliot and Robert Gray 15.15-16.45 Sessions: Gender 1 Chair: Dana Mills, University of Oxford, UK, 1. Alison Jasper, University of Stirling, Scotland, Unsettled Pasts and Disputed Spaces: Does Christianity Have a (Gendered) Future? 2. Katja Neumann, University of Stirling, Scotland, Mourning the Death of God Postcolonial Literature 1 Chair: Helga Ramsey-Kurz, University of Innsbruck, Austria, 1. Vera Alexander, University of Copenhagen, DK, Passage to Eden: Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers 2. Maria Cecilia Aguilar Holt, Harvard Divinity School, USA, Defying the Devil’s Yo-Yo: Arming the New Christian Soldier for Spiritual Warfare in Early Colonial Philippines 3. Josephine Muganiwa, University of Zimbabwe, Hove’s Ancestors: The Struggle to Adopt, Adapt and Preserve Judaism 1 Chair: Marianne Schleicher, University of Aarhus, DK, 1. Claudia Welz, University of Copenhagen, DK, Witnessing: Memory, Trauma and (Re)Presentation between Co-Presence and Absence 2 2. Agata Bielik-Robson, University of Nottingham, UK, Remembering Everything: Messianic History in Benjamin Religion and Modernity 1 Chair: Erik Borgman, University of Tilburg, NL, 1. Jakob Egerts Thorson, Graduate School of Theology and the Study of Religion, University of Aarhus, DK, “Don’t Look for Him on the Cross: Feel His Presence”: On the Memory and the Experience of Salvation history among Catholic Charismatics in Guatemala 2. Diana Alina Colceriu, University of Bucharest, Romania Romantic Christianity, the Religion of a World in Transition: Chateaubriand and Schleiermacher Literature 1 Chair: Elisabeth Jay, Oxford Brookes University, UK, 1. Myung-Joo Kim, Chungnam National University, S. Korea, Memory and Interdependence in Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place 2. Shewanda Riley, Tarrant County College, Texas, USA African American Female Protagonists’ Silence, Visibility and Their Contemporary White Authors 3. Hester Jones, University of Bristol, UK, “In Solitude, for Company”: Prayer, memory and Forgiveness in the Poetry of W.H: Auden Film 1 Chair: S. Brent Plate, Hamilton College, NY, USA, 1. David Scott Arnold, Oregon State University, USA, The Long Road of Memory and the Dream of Restoration: Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries Revisited 2. Daniel Cutrara, Arizona State University, USA, Memento: the Encryption of a Secular Anamnesis or the Religious Construction of Meaning from Trauma 3. Alexander D. Ornella, University of Hull, UK Identity and Memory as Art Forms: A Reflection on Memento and Ricoeur’s Narrative Identity 17.15-18.45 L&T Symposion Literature and Theology: “25 Years of Critical Engagement” A roundtable discussion involving L&T editors from the past and present discussing the issues and challenges that have marked, and continue to mark, the enterprise of religion/theology and literature so much at the centre of the ISRLC and its conferences.” 19.00 Reception hosted by the Journal Literature and Theology (Oxford University Press) 3 SATURDAY 20 9.00-10.30 Sessions: Gender 2 Chair: Pamela Anderson, University of Oxford, UK, 1. Stephanie Riley, Boston University, USA, A Post-Apocalyptic Interpretation of the Holy, Whole Body in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road 2. Dana Mills, University of Oxford, UK, Isadora Duncan and the Non-Precarious Body 3. Maria Cecilia Aguilar Holt, Harvard Divinity School, USA, The Filipino Male Catolona and the Magdalen: An Imitation of the Holy Transgender Postcolonial Literature 2 Chair: Helga Ramsey-Kurz, University of Innsbruck, Austria, 1. Annabell Marinell, University of Innsbruck, Austria, Cultural Encounters and Homecomings in Larissa Behrendt’s Home (2004) 2. Khairul Chowdhury, University of Wollongong, Australia, White Masculine Violence and Exploitation of Faith: Sexuality and the Violence of Colonization in Holy Day 3. Derek Coyle, Carlow College, Ireland, ‘Escaped from the Massacre’: Re-conceiving the Masculine and the Natural in the Late Poetry of Michael Longley Continental Philosophy 1 Chair: Daniel Whistler, University of Liverpool, UK, 1. Mattias Martinson, Uppsala University, Sweden, Mythical Dialectics: Adorno, Benjamin and the Theology of Aesthetic- Philosophic Construction 2. Sarah Egan, University of Liverpool, UK, Memory as Theatre, City as Stage: Walter Benjamin and the Presence and Absence of Jewish Religion and Culture in the Palimpsest of Berlin 3. Arianne Conty, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, They have Eyes that they Might Not See: Walter Benjamin’s Aura and the Optical Unconscious Biblical Studies 1 Chair: Christine Joynes, University of Oxford, UK, 1. Hannah Strommen, University of Glasgow, Scotland, Biblical Beasts and Religious Animals: Presenting the Posthuman in Daniel 4 2. Mary Mills, Liverpool Hope University, UK, The Female Body and Urban Destruction in Lamentations 1-2 and Isaiah 49-52 3. Gerhard Van den Heever, University of South Africa, The Discomfiting Persistence of the End. The Changing Fate of an Apocalyptic Imaginaire Literature 2 Chair: Elisabeth Jay, Oxford Brookes University, UK, 1. David Scott Arnold, Oregon State University, USA, Mixing Memory and Desire in the Luxembourg Gardens 2. Jean Ward, Instytut Anglistyki I Amerykanistyki Uniwersytet Gdański, Poland Wounded faith: R.S. Thomas Interpreted by Tomas Halik 3. Jennifer Reek, Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts, University of Glasgow, Scotland, “What Was Without Light”: Transfigured Memory in the Poetics of Yves Bonnefoy Film 2 Chair: James Thrall, Knox College, USA, 1. Kumar Parag, National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, India, Ethnicity in Bhojpuri Movies 2. Sujaya Dhanvantari, Concordia University, Canada, French Algeria in Transition: Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers 11.00-12.00 Keynote lecture: Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford, UK, The Zig-Zag Lines of Early Indian Migration 13.00-14.30 Sessions: Modern Theology 1 Chair: Trevor Hart, St Andrews University, Scotland 1. Andrew Kaethler, St Andrews University, Scotland, Alexander Schmemann’s Eschatological Symbolism as a Corrective to Broad Sacramentalism 2. Linn Tonstad, Yale Divinity School, USA, Ecclesial Distributions of Christ’s Present-Absent Body 3. Cole Matson, St Andrews University, Scotland, Towards a ‘New Mass’: Grotowski’s ‘Secular Sacrum’ & the Eucharistic Presence 5 Postcolonial Literature 3 Chair: Helga Ramsey-Kurz, University of Innsbruck, Austria, 1. Cheryl Stobie, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa The Guilt of Men: Re-Visioning the Virgin Birth in Thando Mgqolozana’s Hear Me Alone 2. Ileana Dimitriu, University of KwaZulu-Natal-Durban, South Africa, Spiritual Certainties Lost and Found: Coming-to-Faith Stories in select Postcolonial Novels from South Africa 3. William Purcell, Nanzan University, Nagoya Japan, Christianity Brewed in an African Pot: Christianity and the Fiction of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Continental Philosophy 2 Chair: Andrew Hass, Stirling University, Scotland, 1. Daniel Schultz, University of Chicago, USA, The Excessive Saint: Presence, Absence, and Signification 2. Daniel Whistler, University of Liverpool, UK, Intemporality in Hölderlin’s Last Poems 3. Martin de Nys, George Mason University, USA, Identity and Manifestation, presence and Absence Biblical Studies 2 Chair: Christine Joynes, University of Oxford, UK, 1. Jonathan Downing, University of Oxford, UK, William Blake and the Suppression of New Jerusalem 2. Mette Bundvad, University of Oxford, UK, Time in Ecclesiastes and Eliot 3. Samuel Tongue, University of Glasgow, Scotland, The End of Biblical Interpretation; the Beginning of Reception History? Reading in the Secular-and-Religious ‘Spaces of literature’ Literature 3 Chair: Lynn Robson, University of Oxford, UK, 1. Andrew Rudd, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, ‘Watch it Closely’: Anne Carson and the Poem as Monument 2. Rebecca Ziegler, Georgia Southern University, USA, Sacraments for the Secular Man: David Lodge’s Paradise News and Therapy 3. Joanna Rzepa, University of Warwick, UK, The Art of memory, the Art of Prayer: Psalmic Intertext in Modernist Poetry 6 Film 3 Chair: Alexander D. Ornella, University of Hull, UK 1. James Thrall, Knox College, USA, Memory, Loss, and Return in Koreeda Hirokazu’s Still Waking (Aruitemo aruitemo) 2. Zoran Maric, York University, Canada, Distant Echoes: Cities, Myths, Memories and Ghosts in Milcho Manchevski’s Shadows (2007) and Mothers (2010) 3. S. Brent Plate, Hamilton College, NY, USA, Celebrating the Celluloid, Celestial City: the Absence and Presence of Sacred Spaces on Film 15.00-16.30 Sessions: Modern Theology 2 Chair: Trevor Hart, St Andrews University, Scotland 1. Dave Reinhardt, St Andrews University, Scotland, God with Us? Discerning the Presence of the Divine in Embodied Expression 2. Tanya Walker, St Andrews University, Scotland, Documentation of Ephemeral Art: An Eucharistic Encounter? Re-presenting the Presence 3. Christian Hjortkjær, University of Copenhagen, DK, Kierkegaard and Grundtvig on the Subject of Spirit Visual Arts 1 Chair: Aaron Rosen, King’s College London, UK, 1. Charles Lock, English Literature, University of Copenahgen,